


A natural part (of my day)

by Solovei



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Depression, Fluff and Angst, Inappropriate Birds, It's Ronan so there's obviously swearing, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-The Raven King, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solovei/pseuds/Solovei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that they never fought - it's that they had never fought <em>like this</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	A natural part (of my day)

**Author's Note:**

> This is partly inspired by [this great fanfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7517891) by llyrical. I really liked the idea of Ronan not dealing with Adam being away very well, and decided to join that up with other little headcanons I had. Hopefully they work well together!  
> Beta-read by Rach, again, who is awesome.  
> Title from the song "Natural" by Okay.

Really, college was nothing. It was a logical step in the chain of events that he had envisioned his life to be, that was all. He knew he could handle it, after everything else that happened. Mostly, he worried about Ronan. 

Ronan, at the Barns in the morning fog; Ronan who didn’t want to come today see him off with Blue and Gansey, gruffly saying he was busy but Adam could tell the strained edge in his voice. Ronan, who was a glass shard hiding soft down. 

Adam gave himself over to the familiar routine of school-work-sleep, pulling it on like a warm wool sweater. It wasn’t comfortable, but it did the trick. He threw everything he had at the world between Monday and Thursday so that come Friday afternoon he could finally go _home_. 

“Home” was a strangely evolving concept for Adam. Right now most of his possessions (not that he had many) resided at The Barns, in Declan’s old bedroom. This is where he kept his tarot cards and the few other sentimental objects he had managed to acquire. But _home_ must have been something else, something besides where your things were. After all, at some point he and everything he had was that trailer, and that could place not fulfill anyone's definition of a home. St. Agnes had been home, sort of, in that it gave him refuge when he needed it most. But there was still more, something intuitive and hard to pin down. No... Home, he thought, was sitting on the roof with Ronan as the sun peeked over the horizon. It was feeling Chainsaw rub her beak against his shoulder. 

\---

The first time he came home for the weekend, Ronan did not seem at all affected by Adam’s absence. He was himself: swearing like a sailor in casual conversation, driving like a maniac, and making off-colour jokes. He showed him cheerfully all the things he had dreamt and fixed that week, and they had spoken on the phone twice after that. Twice, in one week! Ronan was improving. 

The second and third times were fine, too.

After the fifth time, Ronan stopped calling. Adam looked pensively at his name in his contact list, as if wishing hard enough could make something happen. He considered phoning Declan, but if Ronan hadn’t called _him_ , he certainly would not have called his brother first. Declan was _aware_ of their “arrangement” as he called it but only cared insofar as it was yet another facet of his brother’s life that he could distantly disapprove of. 

On Thursday night, Adam broke down and left a voicemail. 

Adam drove to the Barns the next day with a slight concern. He had an Economics paper due on Tuesday, but it was the last thing on his mind. He couldn’t stand not knowing. It ate away at him, spread cracks in his armor. Parking the Hondayota on the gravel road, he glanced at Ronan’s BMW. There were leaves scattered along the roof and hood, as if it hadn’t been driven in a while. 

His concern turned to mild panic.

“Ro?” Adam called out, opening the door and dropping his bag to the tiled entryway floor. The house was quiet; he thought he could hear a thumping electronic beat coming from somewhere deep inside, but it could have just been his heart.

“Ronan!” he said again, raising his voice. Normally Ronan would be waiting for him, ready to pull him into his arms and squeeze tight enough Adam feared his ribs would break. He paused in the upstairs hallway, taking a deep breath. This was fine. Ronan was probably just dreaming. Out on the porch, he spotted Opal, tearing an old newspaper into pieces. Adam no longer questioned her or the things she did. 

He found him, finally, in one of the stables, wearing motorcycle boots and a heavy knitted blanket, curled up on top of a small pile of hay like a mouse set to sleep for the winter. For a second, Adam thought the worst. Should he call 911 first, or Declan? Or Gansey? 

The bundle stirred. He saw a flash of bare flesh under the blanket, and it took him aback for a few moments. “Parrish,” Ronan said quietly as he propped himself up on one elbow, his voice raspy and slurred. Adam felt a number of conflicting emotions; not able to choose, he just knelt down beside Ronan. 

“What the FUCK, Lynch.” He punched his shoulder, lightly but enough to make him fall over back onto the hay, though he wasn't laughing. “God, I thought…. ” Adam had to take a deep breath and let it out to still his anger, examine it briefly before putting it away into a drawer in his mind. This was its milder cousin, frustration. “Wait, are you drunk?”

“If I was drunk, you’d know it.” Finally, he pulled the blanket closer and sat up fully. Adam could tell that he hadn’t shaved for a few days, and his hair was longer than he’d seen it in quite a few months. Straw-colored dust clung to the tips of it. 

“What are you even doing up here? And why aren’t you wearing anything?”

“Wasn’t… wasn’t fucking _working_ anywhere else. I thought it might be better here.” 

“Did it work?” 

“Do you _see_ anything in my hand? No, it didn't work.” 

Adam sighed again and stood, offering a hand to help Ronan get up. “Come on, let’s go back inside. You smell like cheap goat cheese.”

\---

Ronan was being more difficult than usual. Some part of Adam wondered how much of it was new and how much were things he had simply missed by never living at Monmouth. Had Gansey ever had to do this? Adam had seen the aftershocks of Ronan’s self-destructive urges, but this felt different, it felt… like he had given up. It wasn’t anger, it was surrender. 

“Opal!” Adam called as he entered the house with Ronan in tow. “Turn on the hot water upstairs!” The girl startled, but darted up the stairs anyway.

“Come on, Parrish, just let me go back and try again… I almost had it that time. I just need more--”

“Nope. Here, watch the stairs.”

\---

 

It took some coaxing, but Ronan was finally sitting in the tub, Adam balancing himself on the edge, studying him with a thoughtful expression. 

“What’s the deal, man? You’ve seen me naked before.”

Adam was unswayed. “I know you haven’t left the Barns. Probably not since the last time I was over. What’s going on?” 

Ronan lowered his head into his folded arms but said nothing. 

“A lot’s happened, I know. But you really think I can’t tell you’re not handling things well?” 

The door creaked open and Chainsaw waddled across the tile floor. She made her usual _kerah_ noise upon seeing Ronan, then hopped up on the faucet and started preening her feathers in the humid air. 

“Handling things… fuck, Parrish, you sound like my brother.” 

“I’m just curious why you think you can’t tell me.”

Ronan was quiet again for a long time, just a dripping faucet and a cooing raven breaking the silence in the bathroom. Adam had a sick memory of the day they found Ronan’s mother dead in Cabeswater, how he had sat motionless for hours, barely acknowledging anyone’s presence. 

It's not that they never fought - it's that they had never fought _like this_. Their fights were slammed car doors and minor property damage, both parties eventually realizing they were being an ass, culminating in a passionate make-out session. Adam could deal with that; he’d honed his skills for a long time. This was a whole different beast.

Then finally Ronan spoke.

“I thought I'd be okay with this. But then I remembered how Gansey and Sargent are off doing whatever all the time with fucking Cheng, and Matthew is in DC and it's like… everyone left, Parrish. You're coming back now but you'll leave eventually too. It's me, I know. I’m too much work. Not worth the fucking trouble.”

He sniffled, and Adam had to tell his brain what it was seeing because otherwise it might not believe itself. Here was Ronan Lynch, prince of Henrietta, Greywaren, notorious street racer - here he was, sitting in a bathtub on the verge of tears. 

He knew, though, that Ronan wasn’t entirely wrong. He _had_ wanted to leave. Everything he put himself through in the last few years had been to leave and never look back. But he was no longer so sure. Not sure about never returning, and increasingly, not sure about leaving at all. 

“Ronan…” He started to say.

“It's stupid. Forget it.” 

“You're right. This _is_ stupid. When have I ever left anything unfinished, Lynch? In all the time you've known me, have I even once walked away from something?”

He hadn't, and he knew that Ronan knew that too.

“What I told you that night, I meant it. Tooth and nail, Ronan. It's you and me through whatever, for as long as we can. And I'm still in this if you are.”

Adam got up from where he balanced on the edge of the tub, and leaned over to kiss Ronan's forehead. Against all odds, when he pulled back, Ronan was smiling. It was a small thing, easy to dismiss to the untrained eye, but Adam knew. 

“And, you know… I’ve kind of missed having you barge into my room unannounced,” he threw in at the last moment.

“I’ll keep that in mind for next weekend,” Ronan replied, reaching for the bottle of bodywash on the corner shelf. “Now go eat something, I’ll be down soon.” 

\---

Adam paused as he walked past the bathroom again later that evening. Ronan stood in front of the mirror, wearing pyjama bottoms and running his hand over the barely-curling dark hair starting to appear once again on his scalp. He was frowning until he noticed the boy behind him, at which point his expression changed ever so slightly in a direction Adam didn’t have a name for yet. 

“You wanna help?” He asked, which meant: _could you please help me with this_. The electric razor in his hand was waiting, ready to growl into action. Adam had never done this but had watched Ronan do it what felt like countless mornings, here and at Monmouth and St. Agnes. There was still something defeated in Ronan's voice, an unsettling sort of fatigue. Adam stepped forward, putting his hand gently on Ronan's back in a way he knew he liked. He watched as the Ronan in the mirror closed his eyes, dark eyelashes on pale skin. With his other hand, Adam took the razor. 


End file.
